


Symmetry

by athena_crikey



Category: Ghost in the Shell (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Backstory, Cybernetics, Episode tie-in, Gen, sniping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-09
Updated: 2018-02-09
Packaged: 2019-03-15 17:39:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13618362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/athena_crikey/pseuds/athena_crikey
Summary: Saito comes full circle from mercenary to soldier. Set after Second GIG Poker Face.Sequel toCross-Section





	Symmetry

“Goa,” the woman he has already come to call the Major tells him, slapping a phone and a thin encoded binder against his chest. He takes both awkwardly with his right hand, standing up from his canvas chair rather than have her loom over him. “You leave tonight.”

Overhead the sky is a clear cerulean shot across with con trails: the AEAF making itself seen and heard. These are the final days of the fight for Monterrey; Mexico has been blasted to ruins by all sides in this bitter conflict and right now there’s just enough of it left to scrape together again. But the fighting still continues elsewhere; both sides will find new battlegrounds to decimate and new innocents to slaughter. 

And him? One eye and one hand don’t make a sniper, and that’s more than his job – it’s his essence. So it’s off to India for a week of intensive cybernization interspaced with time spent lying on the beach. Plenty of developing countries have been getting into cyborg tourism in the past few years: the opportunity to have upgrades made while drinking sticky drinks on sandy beaches appeals to those rich enough to afford it. And, with parts supplied by the black market and doctors supplied by underground brokers, so too does the opportunity to get them for a considerable discount. 

But the trip to Goa is more than an opportunity to put him back together, Humpty-Dumpty like – with enhanced cybernetics instead of eggshell. It’s the path to bringing him back into the troop as an official member. He will go to India and have his past, the part of it that featured wiping out the majority of a platoon carrying a nuke through the streets of Monterrey, erased. The trip will leave him free to return as a new man, one who didn’t rain down bullets on the Major’s team. He knows the fact of his participation in the deaths of the Brits and the Americans doesn’t matter to her, but it will to her colleagues. Soldiers don’t forgive snipers the way they do grunts on the ground. 

It’s just another byte of data in the file that makes up his past – some of the bytes remain, but most are erased as he advances through this life. Snipers have short histories. 

The Major has been careful to keep him segregated from her men during the three days he’s been held here in the AEAF base in southern Monterrey. He won’t see them before he flies out tonight, and when he returns in a week it will be with a clean identity, as well as a new wrist and eye. Three for the price of one. 

She reaches out a delicate hand – one capable of crushing his throat without effort, he knows – and he tucks the file and phone under his left arm, then extends his hand to take it. She drops a dog tag on a chain. “It’s who you are from now on. Don’t forget it.”

  
***

Goa is both more liberal and more prosperous than cities further inland. It’s been a tourist trap for decades, but only more recently has it become a hot-bed of illegal enhancement and cybernetic customization. The dividing line between rich and poor is clear to see on the streets: the heavily enhanced foreigners, their blood practically white, strut through crowds of fully human locals who make their living pandering to their guests’ every whim – from knock-off goods and food to drugs and girls. The atmosphere is one of pleasantness and subdued excitement, but Saito can sense the brittleness of it all, the underground stream of resentment and anger that comes from wealth exploiting poverty.

The clinic he checks into is on the beach on the outskirts of the downtown core. It’s made up of two buildings: the hospital complex with a white shining interior that radiates cleanliness and sophistication, and the residential complex – a long three-storey building with suites looking out over the water. Saito’s is on the ground floor and features a patio and direct access to the beach.

Clearly the Major doesn’t skimp. 

He checks in with a suitcase to his name – an empty one, bought for appearances only; he has only the clothes he’s wearing. His handgun and his rifle are both half a world away, stashed in a locker on base by the Major; he feels naked without them. It’s evening when he checks in, and he goes out that night to rustle up some new clothes. Everything else he needs – primarily smokes and scotch – are provided by the resort. He goes to sleep that night listening to the sound of the surf raking the beach, his first night in six months outside a war zone.

  
***

His first full day at the clinic is spent enduring preparatory tests. They’re mostly designed to calibrate the new parts to his cyberbrain and to align them to his bloodwork and bone marrow to negate the possibility of autoimmune rejection. There are also some physical stress tests and a general physical. Saito flies through it and is not surprised – compared this clinic’s usual clientele of businessmen who spend their days behind desks and eating 5 course meals, he’s an Olympian.

He spends most of the second day unconscious. The actual operation time is relatively minor – two hours for his wrist and six for his eye – but the initial work of aligning the new networks to his brain is done while he’s under. When he wakes the systems are shut down until they can be fully calibrated the next day, leaving him still with only one functioning eye and hand. 

Seeing himself in the mirror for the first time is a shock. The black patch of the hawkeye is smooth and streamlined, but the line where flesh meets synthetic is harsh and unforgiving. He’s had a cyberbrain for years, of course, but that’s an almost invisible modification. He’s branded now, a changed man for all the world to see. 

This is the path he’s chosen for himself. And the one that was chosen for him on the roof of the hospital, when the Major towered above him and gave him her first order. In this world he is both puppet master and puppet. He doesn’t regret the sacrifice. 

Good looks and symmetry have never mattered to him. 

Day three is spent calibrating his new wrist and the hawkeye; matching his strength so the new synthetic tendons don’t over-tax his hand, ensuring the video feed from the hawkeye is properly rendering in his cyberbrain. When it’s done he is once again able to use his left hand, dexterity of his fingers unaffected by the new bones and tendons supporting them. 

He will never, of course, regain proper sight in his left eye. The hawkeye is a sniping enhancement, designed for long-distance satellite tie-ins, not everyday vision. The loss impacts him less than he might otherwise have thought: in return he has gained a new efficiency in shooting that he would never have imagined for himself. The trade-off is enough to keep him from dwelling on it. 

After the first three days, the pace of the medical side of things slows. Hourly checks become daily, and his time is mostly spent on the beach under an umbrella – burnt skin could impact site rejection for his implants. He takes tours of the town’s seedy underbelly, something common to all tourist towns, looking for any black market wares that might appeal. He lost his 20mm in the shoot-out with the Major, and while he’s sure she would expect their new sponsor – whoever that ends up being – to supply one, it’s never a bad idea to have the merchandise scoped out. He also picks up a new wardrobe and some personal artifacts – a shaving kit, a set of brass knuckles, a few post cards. Possessions create a personality, and that’s something Saito will need when he gets back to Goa; he’s not coming back as a nameless mercenary, but a trusted comrade. 

In between it all he uploads regular progress reports to the Major’s server. He’s at the end of a very long tethered, but tethered none the less. She will expect value for money; it’s his job to deliver.

  
***

When the full seven days are up he’s given one last check-up and then the clinic signs off on a clean bill of health. He’s chauffeured to the airport where his plane is waiting to return him to Monterrey by way of Dallas. He spends the flight reading files the Major has uploaded to him: the backstory she has assigned to him to disconnect him from any possible tie to the sniping incident that brought him into her circle. His clothes and other belongings he packs into a canvas kit bag.

He arrives in Dallas and changes into his fatigues; he’s taken to the military base and put on a flight to Monterrey with a crew full of American GIs eager to bang some heads. Saito sits silently in the corner and refrains from pointing out that there are no heads left to bang – not in Monterrey. The city is a mausoleum, a boneyard full of corpses and bombed out buildings.

But then, Saito’s never officially been there. So how would he know?

The Americans’ jockish bantering dries up when the plane sweeps low over Monterrey on final descent to the air strip at the base. From the sky the bombing epicenters are obvious, long lanes of destruction scythed through the city. Fires are still burning here and there, plumes of black smoke rising from the wreckage below. 

The air, when they let them off the plane, smells as Saito remembers it: full of dust and ash. He follows the flight officer across the landing strip and into the nearest hanger, where he waits for his bag to be pulled out and handed to him. 

He turns to find the Major standing behind him, hips cocked to one side and arms akimbo. She looks him square in the synthetic eye and says, “I like it.”

  
***

This time he isn’t quartered in the base’s detention block – usually reserved for soldiers caught drinking on duty or otherwise in breach of their orders – but in the wing set aside for Allied troops. The Major and her team operate under the Japanese flag, although Saito has few illusions as to their loyalty to it.

She shows him into a smallish room with two sets of bunkbeds; both bottom bunks have been made up, while sets of sheets and light-weight blankets sit on the foot of the two upper bunks. He leaves his bag by the door; he can choose his bunk once he’s met the men. 

Snipers almost never come face to face with the people they’ve watched through their scopes; if they do, it’s to authenticate the kill. As such there’s a bizarre moment of deja-vu when the Major takes him into the half-full break room and he spots two of the men he drew a bead on a little more than a week ago sitting in the corner of the room furthest away from the rowdy crowd by the pool table. The smaller, older man is drinking alcohol-free beer from a can and smoking a cigarette; the larger man – and Saito doubts there are few who he’s not larger than – is drinking regular lager. It’s clear to Saito from across the room that the man is a full cyborg. His synthetic eyes are Ranger model; milk white and round as bottle caps. 

Both of them look over at the Major’s entrance. 

“Ishikawa, Batou: Saito.” She introduces them with simple gestures; they return the formality with nods. “Just recruited him out of Chad. A sniper,” she adds, without elaborating on his training or pedigree. 

“First tour of duty?” asks Ishikawa genially, eying him up. Saito’s been a professional merc. for nearly two decades but there’s nothing military about him and he knows it shows in his stance and the way he wears the fatigues.

“First under a flag,” returns Saito. “Racked up plenty of hours working off the books. You?”

The Major smiles. “Ishikawa’s an old warhorse. Cut his teeth in the Third World War, hacking down drones.”

“And giving the best damn action in the unit on loaded dice,” adds Ishikawa with a crooked smile. “The kid here’s new – transferred in from the Rangers.”

Batou gives a lazy salute. “Brains, brawn, beauty: you got it all here,” he says, tapping his chest. The Major snorts. 

“Better not let the Sergeant catch you drunk,” she says; there’s only amusement in her tone. 

“By the time he gets here, I won’t be,” replies Batou. _The joys of micromachines_ , thinks Saito, who has to sober up the good old fashioned way. 

“Want a beer?” Ishikawa looks enquiringly at him. 

Saito glances down at his non-alcoholic can. “I’ll have one of those.”

Ishikawa leans back and produces one from the small fridge behind him, passing it over. “Welcome to Mexico.”

  
***

He’s sleeping when the call comes in, a coded transmission from the Major to the three of them. The whole bed jolts as Batou wakes up below him; Saito stares up into the darkness above while the Major barks out sharp statements.

“ _Platoon Delta-9 is pinned down under sniper fire in grid J-2. Assemble in the armory in five._ ”

_So this is the life of a man on a leash_ , thinks Saito as he vaults down off the top bunk and pulls on his jacket. Batou pounds the wall and the light comes on: he’s standing in his skivvies beside the switch like a lumbering giant; Ishikawa’s still sitting on his mattress, grumbling and running a hand through his thick mop of hair. 

“This happen often?” asks Saito, stepping into his boots.

Batou shrugs, pulling on his pants. “More since the Major took out a top-level sniper the other week. Since then the men all come crying to her when they get pinned down. Pathetic.”

Ishikawa looks over at him. “No one likes dealing with snipers. Not that they’re not fine people,” he amends in a relaxed drawl, dark eyes shifting towards Saito. Saito shrugs. 

“Didn’t get into the business to make friends.”

  
***

They’re issued with Bowie knives, handguns and Seburo C-26As with automatic fire and rifle settings. Fine as far as they go, but not a sniper’s weapon. The Major watches them strap on the weapons, then looks to him and nods at a locker. She produces the key for it and tosses it to him; he opens it and finds a new rifle of the same model as the one she confiscated from him. It makes sense; using another man’s rifle is like wearing another man’s clothes. No sniper would ever choose that option if any other were available – his old rifle is useless now, to him in this new life as well as to any other sniper. He lays his hand on the stock and feels the smoothness of the black carbon fiber.

“I haven’t adjusted the sights,” he says. 

“Then this will be your training exercise,” she replies. “Let’s go.”

  
***

Monterrey is scarcely colder at night than it is in the day; without the sun the laser-beam directness of the heat is gone, but the ambient warmth remains. The sounds of night birds and insects have been replaced by crumbling concrete and crackling fires. The city is in its death throes, and even the animals have abandoned it.

They travel across the city by transport chopper. Most of the roads are impassible except by foot, and from the sounds of it Delta-Niner might not have the time it would take them to get there at that pace. 

The sun will be coming up in an hour. Already the sky is lighter at the eastern horizon, the gradual fade into the darkness in the west visible in this wreck of a city no longer contributing to light pollution. Against it stand the ruined silhouettes of buildings, outlines rough and jagged. 

Ishikawa is typing away at a terminal as they fly, trying to locate any signals or pockets of interference in the area that might suggest a sniper’s location. The Major and Batou have synched up with the chopper’s guidance system to monitor their route over the city, watching as the dot that represents them moves further along the invisible line representing their trajectory. Saito, sitting in the back corner of the chopper, is reviewing daytime satellite images of the area surrounding the location the platoon is pinned down in, looking for the best sniper’s nests, the best angles. With his rifle’s range, he can find his own perch at least another kilometer out. 

When he finishes, he sketches up a brief visual summary and sends the encrypted file to the other three soldiers. “He could be in either of these two buildings,” says Saito, encircling the two in his file. “Given line of sight, he has to be on the southern side. Which makes the best building to counter-snipe him from this one,” he indicates a third building, the remains of mid-height residential tower block.

“We’ll drop you here,” the Major indicates a point on Saito’s map a block from the residential tower, “and then go to start evacuating Delta-9.”

Saito looks at her, face impassive. “If you come swooping in the sniper could spook.”

“Evacuating the platoon is our primary objective.”

“If you leave him out there, he’ll just target the next one that comes by. If he’s still here at this point, he’s got nothing to lose.” Not when Monterrey is already lost. 

She runs her thumb along her lip, biting the thumb nail momentarily before straightening her mouth. “Fine. Thirty minutes. Then we take the chopper in.”

Saito nods. “Roger that.”

  
***

It takes him ten minutes to make it through the streets to the building, and another five to find his way up to a sufficient height to get a good visual. He puts down the Seburo and pulls his rifle off his back, sighting along the barrel in the darkness.

For the first time in a combat situation, he clicks into the hawkeye; feels the cap lift and the camera switch on. He cycles through three satellite feeds before finding one that allows infrared and then, better still, night vision. 

The platoon is easy to spot, a huddle of bodies hardly moving, hardly daring to breathe. It takes him another five minutes of scanning the two buildings he noted as most likely sniping spots before he spots his man on the forth story of the south-facing side of the building as predicted, ducking in and out of the window. 

He raises the rifle, takes a slow careful aim while inhaling, then pulls the trigger on the exhale. The bogey disappears from his line of sight. A switch to infrared shows him collapsed on the floor, unmoving.

_Major? Got him._

_Good. We’ll pick you up, then rendezvous with Delta-9._

  
***

They evacuate the wounded back to the base in the chopper, while the rest of Delta-Niner is left to make their way back on foot. Saito sits in the back corner, rifle tucked away beneath his jump seat, and listens idly to the chatter on the comms feed.

It takes them just over ten minutes to return to base; by that time the sun is just licking the edges of the horizon, the sky now a delicate pink. Batou slaps him on the shoulder as they disembark; “Good work, newbie!” He heads across the tarmac towards the open door, and presumably coffee or breakfast or both. Saito stands staring after him, a little surprised. 

“He’s right; it was a good clean kill,” says Ishikawa, coming up behind him. “Got them out of there alive,” he adds, nodding at the men now being carried off the helicopter by a sudden flurry of medics. “You make a good addition. Not that there was much doubt.”

“The Major doesn’t suffer fools.”

“No. And she knows quality when she sees it. Mind you, I like to encounter it without coming into the crosshairs, myself,” Ishikawa says lightly. Saito feels himself freeze, expression stiffening. Ishikawa gives him a half-smile. “Doesn’t take much effort to work out. We come across a Triple-A sniper in the field, and 10 days later the Major happens to turn one up from out in the sticks? Might fool Batou, but I’ve been in the saddle too long.”

“Problem?” asks Saito, in a low voice.

“The Major trusts you, and I trust her. No problem.”

“And the price for your silence?”

Ishikawa shrugs. “Buy me a drink when we get out of here. A proper one: real scotch.”

Saito nods. “Done.”

Out of the corner of his eye he catches a trace of movement; the Major, slipping around them and into the building. He knows she wouldn’t have been seen if she didn’t want to be. He takes it as a sign of approval.

Hoisting his rifle over his shoulder, Saito follows Ishikawa back to the base. 

END


End file.
